Questioning Our Patterns of Questioning

Teachers pose a variety of questions to their students every day. As teachers, we recognize that some questions promote deeper mathematical thinking than others (for more information about levels of questions, see Martens 1999, Rowan and Robles 1998, and Vacc 1993). For example, when asking, “Is there another way to represent or explain what you are saying?” students are given the chance to justify their thinking in multiple ways. The question “What did you do next?” focuses only on the procedures that students followed to obtain an answer. Thinking about the questions we ask is important, but equally important is thinking about the patterns of questions that are asked.